Macy’s

I expected to see “store closing” signs blanketing Sears on Monday at Westfield Sarasota Square.

I found plenty. Just not at the doomed department store.

Three retailers in the past week have closed up shop at the indoor shopping center at U.S. 41 and Beneva Road. The exits come just days after reports that the Sears at Sarasota Square will be among 20 newly announced closings nationwide for the struggling department store chain.

The retailer’s closeout sale hasn’t begun yet, but there’s been plenty of change inside the mall.

Lids, a hat store near the food court, had its gate down and a “store closed” sign up asking customers to visit Locker Room by Lids in the JCPenney wing. Store clerks near the mall’s now empty Starbucks said the beverage giant served its last cup of coffee this weekend. The retailer’s sign already had been surgically removed from the storefront. Meanwhile, the Da’ Marketplatz café near JCPenney had its shades drawn and logos peeled off its awnings by Monday morning. A post on the family-owned business’ Facebook page asked customers to stay tuned for relocation information.

Sarasota Square certainly isn’t a stranger to departures. The shopping center lost several stores to the new Mall at University Town Center when it opened in October 2014. Brick-and-mortar retail is in general turmoil with the rise of e-commerce and shifts in consumer spending habits following the Great Recession. Macy’s pulled out of Sarasota Square in March when it slimmed its portfolio by 100 stores. Sears already had more than 200 closures on the books this year when it lumped our Sarasota location into the new list of causalities last week. Rue21 closed at the mall this spring as part of corporate closings.

The exits seem to be accelerating. I’ve counted at least eight closings at Sarasota Square since Macy’s announced in January it was leaving the mall.

There could be something bigger at work than struggling sales.

Macy’s could have left several retailers in that mall with the ultimate parting gift when it closed in March, said Garrick Brown, the national retail research director at Cushman and Wakefield, one of the largest commercial real estate brokerage firms in the world.

He put it in Monopoly terms for me: Several in-line tenants may have finally gotten their get-out-of-jail-free card, so to speak.

I met up with Brown in May at the International Council of Shopping Centers conference in Las Vegas. While neither one of us has seen the leases attached to the departures, he pointed out that it’s not uncommon for documents like that to come with co-tenancy clauses that allow retailers to break the agreements if the anchors are no longer in place.

If a player like Rue21, which closed just a few weeks after Macy’s did, needs to cut back its store portfolio to make ends meet, it’s likely going to do it at malls where the company already has those get-out-of-jail-free cards in hand.

The alternative is the lawsuits, lawyers and general headaches that come with breaking a lease. Trust me. I’ve seen the paperwork on the Mall at University Town Center’s desertion lawsuits against Edward Beiner and Jackie Z Style Co. It’s not pretty.

It’s impossible to know for sure without seeing the leases, but Macy’s and Sears backing out of the mall could be just what some of these in-line tenants have been waiting for.

Now Westfield has those eight blank storefronts and two separately owned defunct anchors.

Westfield Sarasota Square is losing its Sears anchor just months after its bid farewell to its Macy’s.

Business Insider reported on Thursday that 20 more stores were closing in addition to the 245 that already were slated to shutter this year.

The company announced the latest closures to store employees on Thursday, Business Insider reported.

The Sarasota County store, 8201 S. Tamiami Trail, was the only Florida location on the list.

Sears also has a store in Bradenton at DeSoto Square Mall and in Charlotte County at Port Charlotte Town Center.

Other closings reported Thursday by Business Insider included big markets such as Chicago, Houston, San Diego and Toledo, Ohio, as well as smaller markets like Overland Park, Kansas; Hagerstown, Maryland; and Albany, New York.

Sarasota Square has been plagued with tenant turnover since the Mall at University Town Center opened in October 2014. Cotton On, Men’s Warehouse, Bijou Brigitte, New York Jewelers, Hobby Marketplace and Marks and Morgan Jewelers also have closed in recent months.

The mall’s biggest blow came at the beginning of this year when Macy’s announced Sarasota Square was among 100 stores the department store chain was planning to close nationwide.

Once Sears leaves, the mall’s remaining anchors will be Costco, JCPenney and the AMC Sarasota 12 theater.

Westfield does have a track record of bringing in new and innovative tenants. For example, the mall company brought in Costco Wholesale after Dillard’s left Sarasota Square in 2009.

The mall also has welcomed a number of popular fast-fashion, price-driven retailers in recent years including F21 Red, H&M, A’GACI and Old Navy.

The department store chain this month brought its outlet concept, Backstage, to Edison Mall in Fort Myers. It’s been a year of turmoil for Macy’s, but even as the retailer has boarded up 100 stores throughout the country in the past few months, it hasn’t raised a white flag yet.

Even if it may have put a discount sticker on it.

The first Macy’s Backstage opened in 2015 ready to rival discount players TJMaxx and Ross that had gained footing with consumers during the Great Recession.

Paying full price for products stopped being cool as disposable income decreased. Even consumers who had the cash to spare dialed back on their spending. Unloading a carload of shopping bags wasn’t nearly as much fun when the neighborhood you were coming back to had homes in foreclosure.

Today, even though the economy has rebounded, consumers still haven’t picked up their old spending habits.

That frugal mentality along with the ecommerce boom and the shift toward spending money on experiences rather than things has rattled traditional brick-and-mortar retail. Macy’s along with JCPenney, Sears and so many others have been forced to shutter stores as they’ve fallen out of style.

But Macy’s is emerging from the wreckage with a makeover. We’re up to 42 Backstages now with another two in the works. There isn’t one publicly planned for the Sarasota-Manatee market yet, but they’re rapidly getting closer to our area.

The Sunshine State’s first opened in Boynton Beach in April, just a few weeks after Macy’s tied up its closeout sale locally at Westfield Sarasota Square.

Another followed the next month at Altamonte Springs and the Edison Mall location quietly pulled its curtain aside about two weeks ago and started welcoming customers.

The Fort Myers Backstage is a store within a store, and it’s taken up residence on the second floor of Edison Mall’s already existing Macy’s. A red banner marks the border between the new concept and its traditional petites department, and they really are two different worlds. Even the language Backstage uses is foreign to its traditional counterpart. Signage touting “the thrill of the hunt” and inviting customers to “Revamp that look” for “$9.99 and under” nods to the new regime of consumerism.

Price is king, and Macy’s is pledging its loyalty in a manner even more powerful than a good clearance sale. Every product at Backstage has a “compare at” line whether it’s a light pink pair of Kate Spade pumps retailing at $358 but listed at $159.99 or the Sugar and Diamonds label that I’d never heard of that had been marked down from $24 to $12.99

Shoppers have to dig through the racks and shelves to find coveted, discounted labels, but they’re there. The limited number of each item, too, means there’s typically new things for consumers to find. That rotating variety gives customers a greater incentive to come into the store more frequently.

But Macy’s didn’t just get a new, thriftier wardrobe in its makeover. It’s taken on a whole new lifestyle. Backstage has several mini departments that go beyond the traditional Macy’s stock. It’s not just apparel, homewares and cosmetics. The retailer has created a section for toys, stocked its check-out queue with gourmet, discounted snacks and even added a cooler for soft drinks.

It all looked remarkably similar to a TJMaxx from the way the price tags were printed down to the Haribo gummy bears ($2.99 compare at $3.99) I bought for the drive back to Sarasota.

The clerk told me they’d been relatively busy as she rang up the candy, but she asked me to tell my friends that Macy’s had opened an outlet store.

Which made me wonder if this new makeover will be enough for Macy’s to regain its popularity.

Southwest Florida shoppers already have proven they’ll go back to the department store chain when the price is right. We saw that firsthand as shoppers returned to the Macy’s at Sarasota Square in its final hours. The store started bustling again in January when the 20 and 30 percent off signs first went up and brought in a crowd comparable to the holiday shopping season by the time those numbers jumped to 80 and 90 percent in late March.

As dazzling as the “compare at” prices are, they’re not quite as loud as those big yellow store closing signs that blanketed our local department store in the first quarter of this year.

Backstage wasn’t empty by any means on Wednesday when I stopped in to take a look around, but it also wasn’t as busy as a TJMaxx would be.

We’re likely in for a discount, retail fight scene, but that may not be the most interesting part of this show.

Whether or not the crowd really has any interest in going Backstage still remains to be seen.

Actually, I opened enough boxes to build a small fort in my dining room.

Until about two months ago I’d been a wallflower of sorts to the ecommerce boom. I typically reserved online ordering for sending birthday and holiday gifts to out-of-state friends and family. I still prefer to try clothes and shoes on in the stores and physically touch and wrap gifts when I can. I’ve been writing about the bleed out of brick-and-mortar retail and struggling chains like Macy’s, Sears and Kmart for more than a year, but until recently, I wouldn’t have considered myself a part of it.

The tower of empty Amazon Prime boxes in my home now largely says otherwise.

It started with a single month $10.99 Amazon Prime membership when my Fitbit band snapped in April, and it turned into a retail experiment that steamrolled into agreeing to pay the $99 annual fee. The $8 or so to ship the replacement band was just a few dollars less than the monthly membership, so I decided to enjoy Amazon.com’s signature two-day Prime free shipping for another 30 days.

Today, I’ve got a new addiction and a more personal understanding of why ecommerce is taking over.

Using Amazon.com, the third largest retailer in the world, wasn’t practical for everything. I wasn’t going to spend $7.20 to have 30 ounces of Clorox bleach shipped to my house when I knew I could get it almost $5 cheaper at Publix. I found the same problem with things like lighters and snack crackers.

But for the most part, having the Amazon Prime app on your phone is like carrying Walmart or Target with you everywhere you go, and paying for the membership created this idea of needing to get my monies worth for the service. I stopped making notes that I was almost out of things like shampoo or toilet paper, and instead I started clicking “buy” on my phone. When I ordered my best friend a teapot off her Amazon bridal registry, I used my two-day shipping perks to send her a tea sampler to enjoy with it. Rather than making time to stop at a bookstore before my flight to Las Vegas last month, I had a novel shipped to my doorstep before I left town.

It was harder to compare prices and shop sales, but in general it was easier. I wasn’t lugging 48 rolls of toilet paper from the store to my car. I wasn’t wasting Saturday afternoons on stock-up style shopping trips and waiting in checkout lines.

And in an odd, unexpected way, I also was saving money.

Sure, I was paying the membership fee and a little bit more for most products, but I caught myself cutting back on impulse buys. Amazon has its add-ons section that acts like a digital check-out counter rack, but it’s not the same as spending $4 on a Diet Coke and a bag of gummy worms for the car ride back every time I go to the store. I wasn’t buying little extras just because I had a coupon or they’d been marked down on a clearance sale.

I also ended up driving less, which meant the needle on my gas gauge took more time to dip toward empty.

Even with all that in mind, I was still a little surprised when I opted for the annual membership late last week. I usually enjoy shopping, and there’s a lazy-fueled guilt that comes with having toilet paper and shampoo shipped to your doorstep. I had genuinely expected to go back to being a wallflower in the ecommerce boom by the time I’d gotten my monies worth of that first month’s $10.99 payment.

But even after a two month hiatus, I wasn’t yearning to go fill a shopping cart and wait in checkout lines.

I imagine that’s how a lot of consumers feel.

Amazon is pretty tight lipped about how many Prime members it has. Business Insider estimated in February that the figure was probably close to 65 million, and I’m sure it’s only grown since then.

There’s been plenty of talk in the retail industry about creating unique experiences to drive customers back into brick-and-mortar stores.

Even though I wasn’t going into stores for this experiment, I still found myself focused on experiences.

The Macy’s, Sears and Kmarts of the world aren’t just competing with more interesting retail, they’re competing with everything else their shoppers could be doing.

For me, that meant a few extra Saturday afternoons on Lido Beach.

For the other roughly 65 million, it could be extra time on the golf course, more time with grandchildren or even one less barrier to a weekend away.

Life is awfully short to waste waiting in a checkout line.

And no matter how these traditional chains gear up to battle the ecommerce boom, it’s going to be hard to compete with that.

That’s not a new term, but it’s one that’s gained major steam in national news this month as Payless ShoeSource filed for bankruptcy last week and hhgregg announced Friday that it plans to close all of its 220 stores.

It’s only April, and we’ve already had just as many retail bankruptcies this year as we did in all of 2016. Liquidation sales and closings have become a new normal for retailers, and the chaos won’t be over anytime soon.

But this isn’t another column about what’s falling apart.

A creature called the devil worm lives miles beneath the earth’s surface and is on a short list of resilient creatures expected to survive an actual apocalypse. The 0.5 millimeter worm can endure even the most extreme conditions.

Which got me wondering about what the devil worm of consumerism will be.

I’ve written over and over again that retailers have to be able to do what the internet-based companies cannot and that consumers are spending more money on experiences than they did before the Great Recession.

Those two principles are shaping the next generation of retail and conditioning the present generation’s survivors. It’s why I keep saying it.

People are still spending money, and while it may seem like your neighbors get an Amazon.com package every day, the e-commerce giant isn’t the only one raking in cash.

I talked about the rise of convenience stores in Saturday’s paper. Players like Wawa and RaceTrac have an advantage because their consumers typically need their products now. But these stores won’t be the only ones standing after the retail apocalypse.

The restaurant and food-service industry is growing, too. The National Restaurant Association is projecting that sales will reach $798.7 billion in 2017, which would be a 4.3 percent gain over its estimated sales of $766 billion in 2016. Today, the Sunshine State has more than 1.02 million food service jobs. That figure is expected to increase 16 percent over the next decade, no surprise with how commercial development is booming in Southwest Florida.

Take a look at what’s moving into the new retail spaces in the sprawling Benderson development around the Mall at University Town Center. California Pizza Kitchen just opened west of the mall. Jpan Sushi and Grill, on the other side of Cattlemen Road, is relatively new and there’s a coming soon sign on Acropolis Greek Taverna. Menchie’s Frozen Yogurt, BurgerFi and The Rusty Bucket have all opened within the past year or so. Men’s Wearhouse also opened there recently, but the bulk of the new development in that center is food service.

This trend also is apparent when I comb through commercial building permits each day. And it’s not just University Town Center. That’s just an example. It’s really the whole region.

I haven’t attended a single opening for a non-grocery, big-box store since I took over this column in 2015, and it’s not for lack of trying. I missed one recently at the new Home Depot at 5820 State Road 64 E. in Manatee County, but that was an anomaly. That Home Depot was the first one the company has opened in the country since 2013, and the home-improvement sector has recovered following the Great Recession in a way that retail apparel hasn’t.

The increasing trend of do-it-yourself projects and the desire to fix-up a living space go hand-in-hand with the experiences and quality-of-life purchases that are driving consumerism. If Home Depots aren’t springing up daily across the country, what retail business will?

I have, however, watched ground being broken for a new Embassy Suites downtown, a Hilton Home2 Suites in Nokomis, the Hyatt Place Sarasota/Lakewood Ranch, the Carlisle Inn in the Pinecraft area and a Hilton Homewood Suites near the Mall at University Town Center, among other hotel projects.

As disposable income has increased, so has consumers’ ability to travel, and the push toward experiences is boding well for that industry.

Major hotel chains, such as Marriott, Hilton and InterContinental Hotels Group all reported steady earnings in 2016, according to a report from the Deloitte Center for Industry Insights. An increase in occupancy gave many hotel managers a chance to raise room rates, and the travelers still came. Even the growth of private accommodations aggregators such as Airbnb hasn’t caused them much pain. Meanwhile, most major airlines in 2016 reported steady profits and healthy margins, according to the report. Mix that success with our sugary beaches and heavenly winter weather, and it’s evident why so many hotels are being built here. People want to come here and they have the means to do so. They just need places to stay.

But perhaps the most accurate test is a little more personal than commercial building permits and groundbreakings.

I checked the 20 most recent charges on my own credit card bill this morning, and eight of them were food related. Three were online purchases. One of those was a gift I thought about buying at Macy’s at Westfield Southgate until I realized I could get the same thing online at a fraction of the price and have it shipped directly to the recipient. Groceries, convenience stores and travel-related expenditures made up the rest of my bill.

I can’t remember the last time I bought anything at Payless, I’m not sure I’ve ever shopped at hhgregg and I’m likely not the only consumer thinking this way about the earliest causalities in this painful retail climate.

We don’t need a crystal ball or a scientific analysis to figure out what retail’s devil worm will be.

We’re already designating the list of survivors in the purchases we choose to make.

Macy’s closing isn’t the only shakeup Westfield Sarasota Square has seen in recent weeks.

The department store closed late last month leaving the shopping center down one anchor, but the mall near Beneva Road and U.S. 41 has also seen a few small changes with its inline tenants.

Massage Oasis has opened in a storefront in the Costco Wholesale wing, and T-Mobile will open next door to it this May. Meanwhile, Nalluri Plastic Surgery and Laser Center next month is moving into the former Aeropostale space near the food court, which briefly belonged to men’s clothing store Elite.

Dahlia’s, a locally owned boutique that opened around the holiday shopping season, is in the middle of a liquidation sale. Signage on the store, which is in the former American Eagle Outfitters store in the heart of the mall, indicates that the boutique will be temporarily closed until April 9, and then it will continue selling off its merchandise.

Sarasota Square has seen its share of turbulence in recent years. The Mall at University Town Center brought in extra competition when it opened in 2014 and brick-and-mortar retail in general is struggling to compete with the growing e-commerce market.

Dahlia’s is the latest in a string of retailers to pack its bags. Cotton On, Men’s Warehouse, Bijou Brigitte, New York Jewelers, and Marks and Morgan Jewelers have also closed in recent months.

The south Sarasota mall isn’t alone in losing retailers. The Mall at University Town Center has lost at least 10 tenants since its grand opening, and DeSoto Square Mall in Bradenton seemingly has more empty storefronts than operating ones. Sarasota Square’s sister property, Westfield Southgate, took a hard hit to its tenant lineup when the Mall at University Town Center opened, but is now in the middle of a revitalization that is adding new restaurants, an organic-focused grocery store and an LA Fitness to the lineup.

Sarasota Square also has welcomed a collection of fast-fashion retailers in the past two years, including Torrid, A’GACI, Old Navy and H&M. Westfield officials, too, have plans to turn the shopping center into a hub for teenage shoppers. The company has been working with local, teenage-related nonprofits to help foster and environment that attracts younger people to the mall and makes them feel more comfortable while they’re there.

Windsor, City Fashion and GNC are also new additions. Prime Serious Steak, a Port Charlotte-based restaurant chain, opened at the mall just before the holidays.

Macy’s at Westfield Sarasota Square regained some of its old strength in its final weeks.

Cars have filled the struggling retailer’s parking lot since January. Merchandise has dwindled as customers have sorted through racks in a manner not usually seen outside of the holiday shopping season. The store has become oddly popular in its last days.

It’s not uncommon for the terminally ill to have a sudden burst of energy in the final hours before death.

Perhaps, it’s the same for department stores.

The sunglasses left Macy’s first.

Within five days of the Jan. 4 announcement that the department store would close at Sarasota Square, the sunglasses racks were barren and 30 percent off storewide signs were up.

The way the retailer typically sold shoes went next.

The tables that once held display footwear for brands such as Michael Kors, Coach and Steve Madden had been filled with the store’s stock by my second visit on Jan. 19.

I didn’t have to ask a clerk if my size was in the back. All of the nines were displayed in clusters and marked with 20 percent off signs.

You could already feel the deterioration, and Macy’s had at least another two months to go.

So I documented it. I made more than a dozen trips south on U.S. 41 in the past 11 weeks. I wanted to see how this 146,238-square-foot, four-decade-old department store could sell off the merchandise that blanketed it. The industry is shifting, and sales like these are becoming something of a new normal. It is possible that it won’t be long before these icons of American shopping become little more than retail’s latest endangered species.

Department stores in their traditional form — with their candy counters, glove fitters, well-dressed doormen, crystal tearooms and bustling downtown street corners — were a product of the Industrial Revolution and a symbol of the increasing buying power of the middle class. They met their downfall after World War II with the rise of the suburban shopping mall, but many adapted and thrived as anchors to commercial indoor centers for the second half of the 20th century. When a legacy chain like Florida’s Burdines or Maas Bros. fumbled, there were players like Macy’s to step in and buy up the stores.

But Macy’s, along with Dillard’s, JCPenney and Sears, expanded their brick-and-mortar empires near the turn of the new millennium, and then fell prey to the Great Recession and the rise of e-commerce. Now these companies have too much retail floor space, and modern anchors are preparing to join their downtown predecessors as an industry anomaly rather than a rule.

Today, Macy’s also anchors Westfield Southgate, the Mall at University Town Center and Port Charlotte Town Center. The chain intends to cut 100 stores this year, which would reduce its stable by about 14 percent. With four stores in Southwest Florida, it’s really no surprise that the company has chosen to close one of ours.

JCPenney, Sears and a collection of equally over-stored big-box retailers also have stores on the chopping block, and that won’t be the end. The Macy’s in Sarasota Square is just the next casualty.

I spent the second to last day of Sport Authority’s existence in July touring the skeletal remains at the chain’s three Southwest Florida stores. I managed to find a single swimsuit in my size among the wreckage.

Parts of the stores had been barred off to the public and departments had been entirely wiped out.

But Sports Authority didn’t get that way overnight, and Macy’s wouldn’t either.

For the most part, Macy’s still felt like Macy’s through January. The cookware had thinned and the petites section on the second floor had become a tangle of unused clothing racks. But beyond that — and the 40 percent off signs hanging from the ceiling — it could have been any other department store.

Steven Kirn, a lecturer at the David F. Miller Retailing Education and Research Center at the University of Florida, told me it can take as much as 50 percent off to really grab a bargain shopper’s attention. I found myself thinking that way, too. I was eyeing Mikasa Cheers champagne flutes and a set of flamingo sheets, but the 30 percent off tag wasn’t enough for me to budge.

The overwhelming supply of bedding, cookware, shoes and purses implied most of Macy’s shoppers probably agreed with me.

That wasn’t the case a couple weeks later. The 60 percent signs were up by Feb. 10, and the women’s clothing section had enough space between racks to run a wheelbarrow through it. Rugs had migrated to the first floor and overtook part of the menswear section like an overbearing house guest. Still, sharing the space made sense. Parts of menswear were so bare they looked more like dance floors than retail spaces.

Fine jewelry cases had gone from selling accessories to peddling the forms used to display them. The Tommy Hilfiger case had a few watch stragglers bearing 30 percent off tags and some haphazardly thrown glitter hearts in honor of Valentine’s Day.

Evidently, Macy’s wasn’t feeling like putting much effort into Southwest Florida’s lovebirds this year. It knew the relationship was coming to an end.

A horde of undressed mannequins had taken residence on the second floor where women’s swimsuits had been just a week or so before. A few departments over, the abandoned clothing racks were joined by shelving units, chairs, tables and an assortment of metallic cone-shaped Christmas decorations that made Macy’s feel like a cross between a flea market and Santa’s workshop.

The selection had taken a hit, too. Macy’s had sold out of those flamingo sheets I was watching. The Mikasa flutes were reduced to 40 percent off, but I still didn’t bite with a chance at 60 or 70 percent off looming. I’d be back in a matter of days anyway.

But they were gone when I came back on Feb. 28, and a lot of other things were too.

I heard one woman mutter “it looks like a graveyard” as she rolled a suitcase through the top floor.

There were gaping holes in shelving, and customers shopped to the soundtrack of power tools as workers dismantled the display fixtures in the home department.

Downstairs most of the makeup and perfume counters had been deserted, and the shoes took up less than half the space that they did a month before. The cookware had been almost entirely cleaned out and the purse section had more than a few bare shelves in its mix.

The increasing hollowness was almost unnerving.

And then just three days later, it was crowded again.

Cookware, bedding, children’s clothing and luggage from the second floor had been packed into the ground level. There was no more room to dance or roll a wheelbarrow. The makeshift departments and last-one-in-stock type items made Macy’s look more like a TJ Maxx or a Tuesday Morning than one of retail’s legendary brands. The hordes of bargain shoppers that had hit the floor didn’t help matters either.

The parking lot was nearly full and the crowds were relatively thick.

I found what I was pretty sure was the last pair of size nine brown boots in the store, and I sent the clerk to the back to find the mate.

While I waited I watched another worker remove glass shelves from the wall behind the cash register. A few feet away, two employees unloaded a cart of cookware in space that once belonged to the shoe department.

The clerk returned defeated. I hadn’t found the last pair. I’d found the last boot. Its partner had gotten lost in the chaos.

I thanked him for trying and took the escalator upstairs wondering what could possibly be left up there.

The fixtures, shelving and racks had grown in numbers, but a new phenomenon had also formed. Macy’s was selling off all its office supplies. I could buy used binders with names like “Nancy” scribbled on the front, tape dispensers, stained clipboards and staplers for garage sale style prices. The staff had cleaned out their gift wrapping station and put all that up for sale, too. Giant spools of silver, red and candy cane paper, ribbon and metallic red boxes had taken over a section where the luggage once was.

A clerk told me that the store was slated to close in mid-March. It was March 3. We were down to a matter of days.

The 75 percent off signs were up by March 9, and the shopping vultures came out in full force that weekend.

By the following Monday, the shoe department was reduced to just a few tables. The little cookware that was left was stationed on top of what must have once been makeup or perfume counters, but it was hard to tell at this point. The mannequins had been wrapped in robes of plastic for the move to their next home.

There are personal closets that have more tote bags than Macy’s did on that morning. The same could be said for cabinets and dishes.

Women’s apparel was the lone force in the store beyond the rapidly increasing collection of empty racks and shelving units. Macy’s could have outfitted a whole army with its women’s section, if that army had a use for lace, furs and floral prints.

That won’t last. The rapidly declining Macy’s price tags and Southwest Florida’s eager shoppers have made that clear.

Macy’s had signs up advertising its last 10 days when I stopped in on Thursday, and at least one makeup or perfume counter had been removed from the store floor. It’s hard to know what that store will look like by the time this paper lands in your hands on Sunday.

But no matter what the last sale on the cash register totals, or the last day on the store’s calendar, shopping will never look the way it did two decades ago.

It has evolved over the past 20 years, almost as dramatically as our Macy’s did over the past 11 weeks.These legacy brands are groping for stability in the digital age. It’s why that Macy’s logo and its iconic red star are eventually coming down, and it’s why we’re going to see hundreds of department stores throughout the country empty the way ours did over the next several years.

But that’s not the only reason it’s taking the “new year, new me” concept to extremes.

First-quarter numbers are rolling in, and they’re largely underwhelming. Players like Dick’s Sporting Goods, Target, Barnes & Noble, Men’s Wearhouse and Staples all reported sobering results, and Radio Shack is doing its second dance with bankruptcy in two years.

Consumers don’t shop the way they did 20 years ago, and the growth spurt that retail saw in the ’90s and early 2000s has left the industry with a surplus of dead weight.

Richard Hayne, the CEO of clothing retailer Urban Outfitters, reportedly compared this nightmare to the housing bubble of the 2000s during a conference call last week.

Well, the bubble has burst. It’s time to slim down, and I’m not talking about pounds. This retail evolution is all about shedding stores.

Staples last week pledged to drop 70 from the 1,255 stores it had when it kicked off its fiscal year.

Radio Shack wants to cut about 9 percent of its 1,943. Evidently, the roughly 2,400 stores the chain closed during the first bankruptcy just didn’t do the trick.

Abercrombie & Fitch is still working its way toward a healthy, manageable size. The chain has closed hundreds of stores over the past five years, and it announced early this month that 60 more U.S. stores are on the chopping block.

Even JCPenney, which reported its first quarterly profit since 2010, is downsizing. The company is bracing to slash 130 to 140 stores during the next few months.

It’s unclear how much of this new year, new me mentality will trickle down into the Sarasota-Bradenton market. We’re expecting formal closure lists from these companies in the coming weeks.

But while we speculate about whether the 2-year-old Abercrombie and Fitch at Westfield Southgate and the legacy JCPenney stores at Westfield Sarasota Square and DeSoto Square Mall are approaching their final days, it’s clear we’re already feeling the effects of the retail bubble in Southwest Florida.

The Macy’s at Sarasota Square is in the final stretch of its going-out-of-business sale, and it’s one of 100 in the country that’s closing. The Kmart just north of Fruitville Road on Beneva Road is going through the same process.

This liquidation has returned temporary life to the struggling retailers, and the stores have garnered some crowds comparable to the Christmas shopping season since sales began. It seems as though shoppers will pry themselves always from their devices and the convenience of e-commerce giant Amazon.com for a bargain.

But that’s no secret. It’s why you don’t see TJMaxx putting up going-out-of-business signs.

TJMaxx’s parent company didn’t close a single store last year, and this week company officials announced plans to eventually grow its discount-store empire, which includes Marshalls and Homegoods, by 50 percent. That would add 1,300 North American stores and 500 international locations to the company’s 3,800-store worldwide footprint.

It’s quite a goal for a shaky retail climate.

But something will have to take over the blank spaces that Staples, Kmart and Macy’s are leaving behind.

And if TJMaxx officials are willing to gamble that consumers will shop this way a decade from now — well, I would hate to burst their bubble.

Because we’re still dealing with the last one that popped in the industry.

The retail blows just keep on coming, and this time JCPenney stores are taking the hit.

The department store chain announced Friday that it plans to close 130 to 140 stores and two distribution centers, including one in Lakeland. It’s unclear if our JCPenney stores at Westfield Sarasota Square or DeSoto Square Mall are on the chopping block. The company plans to make that announcement in March.

But the loss of either JCPenney could mean a new life or a major upset for either mall property.

Department store anchors were once a focal point of the American shopping mall, but as brick-and-mortar retail has struggled and consumerism has evolved following the Great Recession, that’s not the case anymore.

Now, really, all they’re doing is keeping these malls anchored in the past.

There are plenty of companies that have managed to weather the new retail climate. They’re just not the ones we traditionally see anchoring shopping centers and they don’t need nearly as much space as Macy’s, Sears or JCPenney required in their heyday. Thriving players such as Ulta Beauty or a TJ Maxx could share JCPenney’s 103,162 square feet of space at DeSoto Square Mall easily, and have space leftover to bring in some restaurants or a fitness center.

But stronger retailers don’t necessarily want to bite at a desolate indoor property when consumers are more interested in shopping at mixed-use, lifestyle centers where they can live, work and play.

The Macy’s space at DeSoto Square has been vacant since the department store brand left for the new Mall at University Town Center in 2014. The shopping center’s management told the Herald-Tribune in December that DeSoto Square had been sold and that the new owners had plans to turn the empty department store into a new wing of the mall, but we haven’t seen any movement on that yet. The mall has since been relisted as pending on the Hakimi Properties website, where it had disappeared entirely at the end of last year.

That Macy’s spot doesn’t seem to have the brightest of futures.

And I can’t think of any reason the JCPenney spot would be any different.

I’ve got a little more faith in Sarasota Square because Westfield has a track record of filling in blank spaces. They knocked down the empty Dillard’s anchor and brought in Costco Wholesale in 2012, and today the mall’s sister property, Westfield Southgate, has a luxury movie theater where Saks Fifth Avenue once stood.

Macy’s, too, is closing its Sarasota Square store in the coming weeks, and while we haven’t seen a formal plan for that space Jim Ralston, the mall’s general manager, told me this week that Westfield has ideas for it and plans to purchase it.

One empty anchor shouldn’t drag the mall down.

But three might.

Macy’s is on its way out, JCPenney might be and I can’t imagine that Sears has much more life in it.

Sears also has been closing stores throughout the country, and while it hasn’t announced a Sarasota shuttering, the department store hasn’t been aggressive about restocking its merchandise. There are gaps in the technology department and shoe department that have lingered just too long after the Christmas shopping season not to notice.

JCPenney, Sears, Macy’s and their parking lots take up 25 acres at the corner of U.S. 41 and Beneva Road. That has the potential to be one of the largest retail gaps in Sarasota, or a site to experiment with.

But one thing is for sure, these traditional anchors just don’t carry the weight they once did. That Macy’s at Sarasota Square seems busier during its closeout sale than it has in its recent history.

You can already see the merchandise thinning at the Macy’s at Westfield Sarasota Square.

Since the department store giant announced on Wednesday that the south Sarasota store and 67 other Macy’s are closing, the gaps on the racks have become a little more evident. I halfway wondered if the patches of missing cookware I saw in the home store and the minor depletion of suitcases was just my imagination or even the aftermath of the Christmas boom.

But just a few miles north on U.S. 41, the merchandise is lush at Macy’s sister store at Westfield Southgate.

It’s the first little sign of yet another evolution for Southwest Florida retail.

The Sarasota Square Macy’s is one of four in our region. Once that Macy’s closes we’re going to have 143,000-square-feet of blank space that will need filling.

And locally Westfield has a track record of addressing empty anchors.

Dillard’s exit from Sarasota Square in 2009 resulted in bulldozers and Southwest Florida’s first Costco Wholesale. The same thing happened when Saks Fifth Avenue packed its bags at Southgate for the Mall at University Town Center in 2014. Today, the high-end theater’s guests dine and recline in front of movie screens on the same land where shoppers once browsed clothing racks and handbags. The vacant Dillard’s site there, too, is finally seeing some movement. Benderson Development Co., which owns the empty department store at Southgate, is carving up that space to make room for Lucky’s Market, LA Fitness and potentially a third tenant.

I spoke with Jim Ralston, the general manager for Westfield’s two Sarasota malls, the day after the Macy’s announcement. He told me he was “a little surprised and a little disappointed” that Macy’s decided to leave Sarasota Square, but he’s also optimistic. He didn’t elaborate, but he said he knows of three or four strong opportunities for that land. Nationally, retail is moving away from giant box stores and traditional brick-and-mortar shopping. Nothing is finalized at this point, and Ralston said managers will do what’s in the best interest of the mall, which could mean another large tenant or a complete revitalization. Dividing up that Macy’s could make room for a few new and potentially unconventional tenants. A new family restaurant, too, could be a big win for the property, he said.

Either way, he doesn’t expect the empty space to linger long.

The mall and the land could present a challenge though, said Steven Larkin, a senior commercial adviser for Michael Saunders and Co. There’s no shortage of 1970s-style malls in this country, and there are four other indoor shopping centers within a 55-mile radius of downtown Sarasota. Sarasota Square has U.S. 41 frontage with an average daily traffic count of 39,000 vehicles, but even with that in its favor, it lacks visibility. When drivers pass it they see trees and maybe the JCPenney, Larkin told me. It’s a shame the mall can’t just take the property and spin it on its axis. The strongest side, he said, is actually the back end that Costco Wholesale, Prime Serious Steak, Ruby Tuesday and Barefoot Bar and Grill call home.

Whatever Westfield decides to do, it needs to be innovative and outside of the box.

If Sarasota Square takes on another department store, Larkin suspects the mall will be repatching that Macy’s gap again in less than a decade. The shopping mall would be better off exploring a mixed-use or even a medical component, he said. Traditional anchor stores have lost their appeal with consumers.

He doesn’t have much hope for Sears at Sarasota Square either. Sears’ and Kmart‘s parent company also announced closures this week. Sarasota Square made the cut this time, but the chain is hurting and that space isn’t booming. Portions of the 224,713-square-foot site, which includes the auto center, have been listed for lease for several months, and Sears’ parent company was advertising it for revitalization at the International Council of Shopping Centers conference in Orlando last year.

It may not be long until that mall has two blank spaces to cope with, but that kind of change may not necessarily be a bad thing.

Between Macy’s, Sears and their parking lots, Westfield could potentially have 25 acres of land to mold.

For some perspective, that’s roughly the same size as the former trailer park at U.S. 41 and Stickney Point Road that Benderson Development intends to turn into a hotel, residential and retail mash-up. If you add JCPenney to the struggling department store mix, the three take up just slightly less land than the Ed Smith Sports Complex.

That’s a lot of room for creativity.

So today we have a few blank spaces on Macy’s store shelves.

In a few weeks we’ll have gaping hole in the shopping center.

But if Westfield keeps up with its reputation, we’ll see something dramatically different than three marginally similar department stores.

And in the meantime, it’s not like we don’t have three other Macy’s in the region to shop at.